Sacred Fire, Silent Death

Have you ever walked into a church service where everything looked absolutely perfect? The stage lighting could have rivaled a Broadway production. The worship team didn't miss a single note. The pastor's sermon was so polished you could see your reflection in it. But something was missing. Something crucial.

Power.

Real, tangible, move-mountains, shake-hell kind of power.

You sit there watching people go through the motions—beautiful, rehearsed motions—but there's no fire. No electricity in the atmosphere. No sense that at any moment, God might show up and wreck everybody's plans. It's religion at its finest, but Christianity at its weakest.

Here's what deeply concerns me: Most people in that service don't even realize what's missing. They've grown accustomed to form without fire, structure without Spirit. Like Samson, who "did not know that the Lord had departed from him" (Judges 16:20), countless believers and entire congregations are spiritually unconscious to the absence of God's manifest presence.

The departure doesn't happen overnight. It's gradual. Imperceptible to many. Like the glory leaving Solomon's temple in Ezekiel's vision—it didn't vanish in a single moment. First, the glory moved from the Holy of Holies to the threshold of the temple (Ezekiel 9:3). Then it departed from the threshold to the cherubim at the east gate (Ezekiel 10:18-19). Finally, it lifted from the city entirely and rested on the mountain east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 11:23).

Stage by stage. Step by step. Until what was once the dwelling place of the Most High became just another building.